In this brief paper, we use ESS Roud 8 data of 2016 to analyse the relationship between education level and climate change belief. A Gallup analysis with a world poll pointed out that education is the strongest predictor of believing in climate change (Lee et al. 2015). People with a higher degree tend to be more concerned about climate change, while, on the other hand, this value slightly decreases while the education achieved decreases. So, it is possible to assume that education is a good predictor of people’s awareness and beliefs of climate change (Hornsey et al. 2016).
Based on previous studies, we formulate the following hypothesis:
H1: Highly educated people are more aware of climate changes than lower educated ones.
This analysis will mainly focus on two variables: educ_level and climate_chng. Educ_level has been recoded from the eisced variable in ESS8 Dataset. It is codified with seven education categories harmonised amongst all countries included in the survey. One represents the lowest category and seven the highest. Climate_chng has been recoded from the clmchng variable. It answers the question, “Do you think world’s climate is changing?” and it is codified with four levels, where one stays for “definitely changing” and four stays for “definitely not changing.” To test our hypothesis, we will use one method. We will make a linear regression model which will include the education level as the independent variable and the climate change belief as the dependent variable (Crona et al. 2013).